February Photo Challenge 2008

by Dan

Congratulations!!!

To the winners of the monthly photo challenge.

Theme: Flowers

The Photo-Toyz has recently concluded its first photo challenge for the month of February this year. This is the first of among the series of events that will be held every month. For the first photo challenge, there have been (2) two winners declared along with the honorable mention.

1^st Place: Pink Star

“Pink Star, I used a Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens to capture this flower resembling the rays of the sun or a beaming star. I was exploring its use for macro photography. With the buttery bokeh, seems this lens has served me well, for the lens is very versatile and the photo above explains it all.“

by: Danilo Cruz

1^st Place: Glow

“I call this picture “glow” because the flower needs sunlight. Through the sunlight, it glows and its beauty is revealed. The challenge to me was, how will I be able to isolate the flower from the distracting background and see it glow. The idea that came into my mind is to put a black cardboard behind the flower and let the sunlight do the trick.”

by: Paulo Alano

Honorable Mention: Roses

by Ched Fernandez

Honorable Mention: In flight

by Tess Bueno

Adobe Bridge CS3: JPEG images post processing a la RAW

By Paulo

One of the problems I have when it comes to post processing images in RAW format is that it takes a lot of time for the computer to process which gets me bored. What I wanted is, to post process a JPEG image in a snap and achieve the same result as RAW.

I am going to post a series of articles that will show you simple tricks to make your dull pictures become alive!

I am not here to teach everything in details. What I will show you are short steps yet very helpful tricks. For example, I can show you how to make a not so blue sky becomes very blue in an instant. I know this is a common problem yet only a few knows how to tweak to enhance an image. You just found the right site that addresses this common problem.

Sit back and relax. As promised here’s my very first trick.

Enhancing a not so blue sky:

Step 1: Open Adobe Bridge CS3

Step 2: Click once the image you want to post process.

Step 3: Click file from the menu bar then select “Open in Camera RAW”. See figure below.

Step 4: Click the “HSL / Grayscale” tab. See next figure below

Step 5: Tweak the slider bar for “Blues” under “Hue” tab according to your taste. See next figure below.

Step 6: Click the “Saturation” tab and tweak the slider bar for “Blues” according to your taste. See next figure below.

Step 7: Click the “Luminance” tab and tweak the slider bar for “Blues” according to your taste. See next figure below.

Step 8: Save the image by clicking the “Save Image” button located at the bottom left corner. Always save the modified image with a different filename so that the original image will be preserved.

Here’s before:

Here’s after:

That’s all you need to enhance the blues. Isn’t that amazingly simple? If you can enhance the blues so are the greens.

Stay tuned for more tricks using Adobe Bridge CS3. See you on my next article.